Doris lives up the street. She is a retired teacher but has never stopped teaching. She invites our kids into her yard and gives them shears to cut her flowers, reminding them to pull the leaves off before we put them into water so they’ll last longer. Doris was a professor at the University of Texas where she taught weaving and textiles. These pieces of art are hers. She spends hours each day on her knees working in her garden and visiting with passers-by.
Today I had the pleasure of attending a lecture and discussion led by Robyn O’Brien and sponsored by the wonderful folks from Stonyfield Farm. Robyn is one of my heros. She is
a champion for cleaning up our food supply by educating Moms like me about GMO’s, additives and the artificial junk found in much of todays food. She does this by sharing the devastating affects these pollutants are having on our health of families, including her own. A deep well of knowledge, she’s created a resource for all of us with The Allergy Kids Foundation.
She encourages us each to do one thing to affect change. Starting with my little family‚ we are eating organic. We already plan a weekly menu and cook at homemost nights. We enjoy Meatless Mondays. We are all (11 year old and 13 year old included) learning to read food labels. Thank you Robyn for inspiring a Mom like me. - @BBrosBridget
Adam’s wife Julie, Robyn, Marty’s wife Sue and Me!
In 2001 I decided to give myself the gift of Bob Dylan. He was touring the Midwest and playing at State Fairs. He was performing on my birthday, August 10th, at the Iowa State Fair Grand Stand. I bought a ticket to Des Moines and packed my Yashica Mat 124 medium format camera and my Polaroid Land Camera. I also brought along a journal my friend Lauren Greer made for me specifically for this event (note the cover below). These are some snapshots from the journal. I went on to see him play in Missouri and Illinois the following days, but nothing came close to the Iowa show.
Happy 70th, Bob Dylan.
Each year, 77,000 Young adults aged 15 to 40 are diagnosed with cancer; that sucks. It’s actually the only group whose survival rates haven’t increased since 1975; that sucks even more! So, in the midst of SXSW 2011, one of our clients, the LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance, hosted several hundred people for a Break Cancer world record breaking party. Here’s a recap of all the fun and intense record setting! (more…)
This past weekend I attended the TEDxAustin conference. I want to share what the whole day collided to provide for me. The theme that emerged and united the best of what I heard: Vulnerability.
To be open to learning we must, in some ways, make ourselves “liable to succumb, as to persuasion”. In this way I began the day desirous more for a learning experience than wanting to have my own world view neatly reinforced. Is this not a vulnerable approach? But it is in the context of another denotation of the word vulnerability, one provided in relation to the game Bridge, that I find the true hope with which I approached the day ,”in a position to receive greater penalties or bonuses”. Who doesn’t want a bonus?
Here are the quotes that spooled up vulnerability for me in hopeful new ways: (includes some gentle paraphrasing)
We are all connected. And these days our greatest advances and greatest foibles only prove to us how connected we are. We are indeed more vulnerable than we would like to imagine. But there is opportunity in acknowledging our vulnerability, joining it in service of solutions that promote true prosperity for human and environmental stakeholders. And while that may seem like a pollyanna statement, I am feeling more confident that it’s the only basis for 21st century innovation. At worst it’s an honest starting place.
Thanks to the TEDxAustin team for serving this all up with grace.
For everyone reading the post, especially those who attended, please share your thoughts about what you took from the day by clicking the post title to submit a comment.
Last year we produced a short film for the National Cancer Institute and Legacy on their TReND program. TReND essentially minds the tobacco control gap looking for communities who are underserved by larger initiatives. We edited down our TReND short to a hard hitting teaser especially for MLK day. (Thanks to Andrea Perry for letting us use her track Fastbox on this web release.)
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Now more than ever tobacco is a social justice issue. TReND’s research proves this. We know where MLK would come down on the issue of tobacco’s disproportionate grip on communities of color. Big tobacco is dug into the African American community in an especially deep way and is addicted to the dollars that flow from it.
But the great irony is that MLK likely found his true calling while picking tobacco. The story from NPR after the jump is an amazing one: (more…)
Austin is a pilot city for Daimler AG’s Car2Go car sharing program. They basically dropped a fleet of 200 Smart ForTwo cars on the city with a very smart reservation system powering the whole operation. I won’t go into details, but you can with help from this great little article by Kate X Messer.
Having recently sold a vehicle, I saw this Smart invasion as an opportunity to become a one car family again. My biking to work works on most days, the commute is only five miles one way. But what of early morning meetings where you need to show up dressed in more than lycra? The Car2Go program held out the promise of closing this gap. The buses in Austin simply don’t cut it. So this was my personal intermodal opportunity to seize. I signed up.
Now Car2Go isn’t cheap to use. But you have to hold it up against the real monthly cost of owning a vehicle. which is more than you think when you consider – your payment, annual registration, inspection, insurance, gas, maintenance, and time spent overseeing maintenance. This says nothing of environmental costs which vary depending on what you drive or how you get around. So when you do some accounting, the cost per minute model that Car2Go uses is put in it’s proper context.
And that’s really what this method of transport forces us to do – consider. Consider where we are going, when and why. Consider each trip. Consider the costs. I love this side effect. The forced consciousness. Riding a bike is much easier by comparison. But we do have to reconsider the whole matrix of how we get around and we all know it. So what are we willing to do as individuals, companies, and municipalities to drive efficiency up and environmental costs down? How grand will our vision be? The ideas can come from anywhere, and they need to.
A letter from our late fathers chief oncologist, Dr. Patrick Hwu. An example of excellence in humanity from a place with a reputation for excellence in medicine. A great lesson in grace and dignity for all businesses to behold.
This perfect Fall weather begged me to walk the neighborhood today. I ended up in Ed Schaefer‘s guitar shop. I was blown away by what I found.
Austin is place with authenticity to spare. It’s what we at The Butler Bros search for every day. When we stumble on such a rich vein, it’s always fun. Ed is a humble and talented craftsman. He doesn’t love his work; he is his work. He is obviously patient and meticulous and his reward is creating fine guitars for some of the best jazz guitarists in the world, or anyone else who wants one. He says each one is like a child, unique, with it’s own character and tone of voice. What would the world look like if we were all craftsman?
Here’s a bit of Ed’s story:
Throughout my playing career I always wanted a fine archtop, but could never afford one. My interest in building archtops thus began! I view the archtop guitar as a pianist would view a Steinway. I believe any style of music can be performed on an archtop guitar, however, tradition tells us that most of them are played by jazz players. Being from Texas, I have focused on another group of players, the western swing players. Every detail from nut width to choice of wood involves the customer’s input. I welcome visitors to my shop anytime so if you are in the area please give me a call and come by for a visit!
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You may remember seeing the Mitchum commercials imploring users to generate content. I will paraphrase: “Hark, doth ye knoweth the hardest working person in these United States?! Well then ye shall maketh us a film of 120 seconds and thou should upload it for the greedy eyes of our Hollywood jury. Ye shall pimp our deodorant with your authenticness for the chance to win 100K stone and have a fim made about ye hard working ways by the Maysles.” And so the “Mitchum hardest working ______ in America” campaign began.
Marty said, Roly could win this Mitchum thing. I said, we could run a little social campaign too. Let’s fire up the production machine. So we did. Made an entry film for Roly with the assistance of omni-production man Travis Wurges. Next thing you know Roly is in the top ten. We sized up the finalists. Three people caught our eyes as the real contenders: a preacher who ran a camp for at risk youth, a self financed first responder to natural disasters, and a river cleaner named Chad Pregracke who had Mike Rowe behind him. The Chad + Mike thing reeked of presdestiny but we were game anyway.
Roly needed a cause to compete with these guys. We spoke to him about giving 15K in winnings to LIVESTRONG. He agreed. So did Travis. We made another film to drive the promotion of this intent to give. We went crazy in social media, building a Roly fan base. We built the voteroly.com brand on Facebook andTwitter. With help from Eric Webber we got quite a bit of earned media along the way; Nik Ciccone on My Fox Austin, Jim Swift on KXAN Austin, Bettie Cross on KEYE.
He may not have won, but Roly Rolon still works hard. If you need any of the services described in his film give us a call and we’ll connect you with him. As for Mitchum, all the hard workers seemed to have worked just as hard for them. Biggest insight gained – love thy crowd. Mitchun showed little or NO love to the users that generated their content, the crowd they sourced to care, and that was an easy failure to avoid.
See the extra film we made for Roly after the jump. (more…)